Homer

Homer is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two oldest surviving works of Greek literature. Tradition placed him in Ionia, on the coast of modern Turkey, and modern estimates put the poems in the 8th or 7th century BCE. Nothing reliable is known about his life, and scholars still debate whether one poet, several, or a long oral tradition produced the epics. This is called the Homeric Question.

The poems were the basis of Greek education for centuries. Book 18 of the Iliad describes the workshop of Hephaestus, the smith god, who builds tripods on golden wheels that roll to the gods' meetings by themselves, and golden maidens who think, speak and help him walk. The Iliad also has Zeus threaten rebel gods with Tartarus, as far below Hades as heaven is above the earth.

Historians of technology read these passages as early imaginings of automata. There is no archaeological evidence that such machines existed in the Bronze or Iron Age; Homer presents them as divine marvels.